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River Loire, France
Loire Princesse
River cruising using luxury boats with passenger accommodation for on-board holidays, often up to two weeks in length, has become increasingly popular in Europe. Whilst Danube paddlers such as Stadt Passau and Stadt Wien were built primarily as transport ships, these are purely leisure holiday cruise boats and are familiar sights on the Rhine, Moselle and Danube in particular. A modern phenomenon, they have been built with the most modern propulsion systems and employed diesel engines. 

One ship is remarkable in that side paddle-wheel propulsion was chosen for this otherwise state-of the art vessel (her owners also commissioned a similar vessel with stern-wheel propulsion for the upper River Elbe to commence operation in the 2016 season). Paddle propulsion was chosen because the River Loire can be particularly shallow in places :


Loire Princesse at Nantes on July 13th, 2024

Loire Princesse

A new ship was put into service in 2015 with sections being built by Mecasoud at St Nazaire (France) for use on the River Loire in France. The 90-metre long ship with a mass of 700 tonnes, designed by Stirling Design International (SDI) and assembled at the STX dry dock provides luxury twin berths for 96 passengers and very much follows the lines of modern European river boats - long and low, to pass under the large number of low bridges on European rivers. Remarkably, however, this ship, named Loire Princesse, has two side paddle wheels and all documentation and advertising for the vessel indicates that these will be the primary means of propulsion, powered by 2 x 500 HP diesel engines with direct drive to the wheels. The wheels are  4.5 metres in diameter. The designer's information regarding the choice of paddle wheels for the vessel was that they were the most suitable as the River Loire is very shallow in places  - and this technology gives the first opportunity to use a boat of this size on the river. The draught is reported to be only 70 cm (approx 3 feet). Manoevrability will be aided by waterjet thrusters fore and aft. The paddle floats are not feathering (ie no eccentic wheel) which is unusual in that they are less efficient at paddling through water and became obsolete in the early days of paddle ship technology. However the extra weight of the equipment and the associated extra maintenance costs of the more complicated wheel were calculated to cost the company more than the extra fuel that this arrangement would require.

The diesel fuel consumption has been reported as 70 litres per hour at standard 10 km/hour speed and 140 litres at 15 km/h. 
The original enclosed paddle boxes have been removed to allow water to escape better and much reduce the vibration which it was causing
Loire Princesse is operated by the CroisiEurope company and sails as far upstream as Angers


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